Analysis of Fiction and Non-Fiction Prose

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  ENG 3030
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: These low-cost texts are being utilized in an English literature course for undergraduate students by Dr. Kate Simonian at CSUSB. The open resources include links to PDFs of stories, stories published online, self-generated work-sheets, student texts and stories published on websites. The main motivation to adopt these low-cost materials was saving students money and increasing the likelihood of students doing the readings. Students accessed the resources through the Canvas course page.

Course Title and Number - Analysis of Fiction and Non-Fiction Prose (ENG 3030)

Brief Description of course highlights:  In this class, students learn a range of creative nonfiction and fiction techniques. They learn how to close-read a work of scientific nonfiction and write a literary analysis. After this they work on longer, thesis-based analyses of text they choose, as well as creative applications of science-writing to produce a narrative documentary and a sci-fi story.

(From Course Catalog): A literary analysis of both fiction and nonfiction prose with special emphasis on how to write effectively about these forms of literature. Satisfies GE Writing Intensive designation (WI). Formerly ENG 303B.

Student population: Most are English majors, as 3030 is a core subject for an English BA. There are no prerequisites. Students generally understand the five-paragraph essay and some conventions of academic writing, but they have little familiarity with literary techniques or science-writing. 

Learning or student outcomes:  (By the End of Class Students Are Able to): 

• Identify techniques of fiction and nonfiction prose in the act of close-reading and employ a literary vocabulary when discussing these techniques.
• Structure an essay with a thesis supported by both literary evidence and external research.
• Articulate some philosophical areas of debate within science and how these can animate nonfiction and fiction.
• Consider the definitions of fiction, nonfiction, science-fiction, and science writing and how these are “fuzzy sets.”
• Enumerate strategies that work for your critical writing, as well as ways in which you hope to improve it.  
• Embrace moral ambiguity and complexity, apply interpretive lenses, articulate multiple perspectives, and reflect on how social context affects meaning.
• Understand that the study of literature has more recently moved to incorporate more marginalized perspectives, and what the value of this may be.
• Thoughtfully analyze the work of peers using a neutral observation method.

Key challenges faced and how resolved:  A major challenge was deciding between the plethora of texts available for free online.  Another challenge was that l had to generate many handouts with my own material, which was time-consuming. I’ll be able to reuse these handouts in subsequent class sessions.

The use of student-generated texts was effective, but there were sometimes students who were reticent to share their work with the class. I overcame this through using a very positive and affirming tone and manner of analyzing said texts, which made students much more likely over the course of the semester to allow me to use their work for group analysis.

Syllabus: ENG 3030 Syllabus_Spring 2025_Simonian.pdf

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title:  Readings for Analysis of Fiction and Non-Fiction Prose

Brief Description: No textbook. I used an assemblage of PDFs available online, stories published online, self-made resources, student-generated texts, and websites.

Please provide information on the resources used 
Youtube videos ("The Wacky Giraffe" by Ze Frank)
PDFs of excerpts of books (World War Z, by Max Brooks)
Texts published online (Marionettes, Inc,” by Ray Bradbury)

Authors:  Some authors included Ze Frank, Ted Chiang, and Octavia Butler

Student access: Students can access all materials via links on Canvas. They have direct access, as no texts are contained in a repository. Self-generaed and student-generated texts are posted entirely within the Canvas course site.

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook. Texts usually cost around $50 and my students paid nothing. With an enrolment for 30 students across my two sections, $3,000 was saved.

License: The short-story PDFs and websites are copyrighted. 

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Please provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost. The main motivation for the adoption was to save my students money. The adoption also forced me to use texts that students find more engaging, because less traditionally “literary.” I foresaw that their ability to access the readings on their phones, as well as the perceived “fun” of the digital texts, would increase the percentage of students who did the readings, and it did. 

How did you find the texts for this course? I used my own knowledge to find resources online, as well as online pedagogy forums on platforms like Facebook. I crowd-sourced texts from students at the start of the semester.  

Sharing Best Practices: There are many great science-based fiction and nonfiction works, but much of the writing about writing is contained in hard-copy books. That said, my students appreciated the accessibility of the texts. They enjoyed being able to link to and share online resources.

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned. I learned that to teach a course like this involves getting creative with transmitting techniques to students, and that a high degree of familiarity with nearly every literary technique is required of the instructor.

Making handouts is time-consuming but necessary; I recommend staggering the production of these over the weeks preceding the commencement of the course.  The use of student-generated texts was effective, but there were sometimes students who were reticent to share their work with the class. A positive and affirming tone and manner of analyzing said texts helped to increase participation.

Share any curricular or pedagogical changes that you made as part of the Textbook/OER/Low Cost Adoption. In previous classes, I have relied on many more short stories and traditionally “literary texts.” Using low-cost materials found online opened me up to a range of texts that students find profoundly engaging. I did have to prepare more material and lesson plans to suit all the new and contemporary texts we examined.

Instructor Name - Dr. Kate Osana Simonian 
I am a English Assistant professor at California State University, San Bernardino. 

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://www.csusb.edu/profile/kate.simonian

Please describe the courses you teach
ENG 2500--Introduction to Creative Writing
ENG 3030--Analysis of Fiction and Nonfiction Prose
ENG 3500--Literary Movements: Aesthetics and Craft
ENG 4180--Intermediate Fiction Workshop
ENG 5130--Advanced Creative Writing in Specialized Genres
ENG 5190--Creative Writing Thesis
ENG 6210--Teaching Imaginative Writing

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.   How we see the world is often how we teach. My younger brother has an intellectual disability. In 2005, my mom, desperate to prop up his grades, asked me to tutor him. At first, the scenario played out badly. Close-reading, however “fun” the texts were, repelled him. Imaginative prompts yielded blank pages. So, what did I, a budding fiction writer, do? I turned to story. 

Good stories move before they instruct, so I won him over emotionally. We wrote about his passion: cars. He was a visual learner, so we used diagrams to learn essay structures. We spoke of the mental “story” that an essay told and used anecdotes as mnemonic tools. He learned to not only re-frame his attitude into a growth-based model, but to stop seeing himself as defined by a perceived deficiency. Today, my pedagogy clusters around these same principles of storytelling, with the goal of re-writing how students see themselves. 

Win Hearts, then Minds. Learning happens best in a safe space. In my Introduction to Creative Writing, I create this environment on the first day. Through a humorous confession of my own errors, I dispel some ideas that first-time writers might harbor; model the “critical kindness” with which I want students to approach their own work; and establish a norm whereby incorrectness is a corollary of brave writing. I then distribute a survey asking about past experiences and preferred learning styles, which springboards us into a discussion of how we’d like the class to be conducted. By giving students buy-in, I establish that the relationship between us will be two-way, not top-down. One of my objectives in any class is to show students that their interests are valuable. To get my creative writing students in this frame of mind, we have “Glimmer Days” throughout the semester, in which students share a moment, image, idea or situation from the preceding week that has stood out to them. This increases trust between group members; is a low-stakes way of getting reticent students talking; and establishes the habit of active noticing. When the primary focus of a class is on academic writing, my approach is different. In my ENG 110 composition class, for example, we discuss critical arguments for the “worth” of art—aesthetic, political, intellectual, canonical. The capstone essay is a defense of a student’s most beloved artist. Given the range of lenses we’ve discussed, why might we consider their work “art?” Being able to close-read friendship bracelets, The Wu-Tang Klan, or Deadpool shows students that art exists in their daily lives. Their wealth of knowledge on the chosen subject leads to a more nuanced discussion of socio-historical contexts. In sum, writing their passions lets students learn better, and leaves them empowered. 

Show, Don’t Tell. I use active learning in the classroom, including field-work, transcribing overheard conversations, pair performance, games, collaborative stories, storyboarding, and cognitive mapping. One of my favorite exercises to use is debate. During my The Great Books Course, students studied The Odyssey. I assigned roles to each student (prosecution, defense, judge, witnesses) for a criminal case trying Telemachus for his murder of the maids. Quite apart from this being one of the most passionate teaching moments of my life, with students wanting to stay long after the period had ended, the exercise showed students how cultural values of a text may be received differently over time. 

Everything Is a Story. In class, I make content memorable through narrative. I often start class with an open-ended question; like a good introduction, this hooks the class and primes them to look out for certain information. As a group, we may move through a provisional answer to the posed question, and then problematize it through Socratic questioning. We might split into four groups and re-define the question, then have each group report back. We may do a collective brainstorm on as-yet-unconsidered assumptions within the question and concretize our understanding with a “minute paper” that elaborates upon what we’ve discussed. Finally, we’ll return to the question that opened the class. Such structuring does more than let students know they need to think critically; it shows them how to. It shows them that the conclusions to which we come, not unlike a final story draft, are often only arrived at through a process of interrogation. Even then, the answers we reach are only provisional. 

Revision Makes the Story. Revision is one of the hardest things to teach. I open the subject of revision with George Saunders’s video, “On Story,” in which he explains revision as a process of “active love” whereby we urge a work to higher, more complex, ground. To supplement this, workshops and critiques are a standard part of my classes. After a first assignment has been handed in, I hold an ongoing in-class “reading series” in which I have students read excerpts of their changed versions aloud. This normalizes the process of revision and, because I always choose students who have made substantial structural changes, lets students know that they should be making large-scale changes to their drafts.     

Revision is also built into my teaching. Reflecting after each lesson; watching footage of myself teaching; harvesting ideas from literature, conferences, and peers; re-working assignments; and revising syllabi lends me the wisdom of multiple iterations of myself. Direct feedback is also invaluable. For example, this semester, in my Introduction to Creative Writing Class, students were asked to do a mid-semester course evaluation. When students said that they sometimes didn’t know what a given lesson was going to be about or what skills they were meant to have learned, I more directly identified objectives before and after classes, instituted “muddiest” point index cards for gauging confusion, and made more comprehensive rubrics. Through metacognitively discussing my teaching practice with students, I increased transparency, and showed them that learning is a never-ending process for me, too.

My teaching has changed since I tutored my brother, but my focus on narrative remains. A good lesson, like a good story, wins the student over emotionally, shows before telling, offers provisional closure, and stresses the importance of revision. In my classes, teacher and student are co-authors. We strike out in a direction, but end in no predetermined place. For me, that is the joy. That is what keeps me reading.